


and you wonder why i can't relate anymore

by Anonymous



Category: Timothy Wilde Mysteries - Lyndsay Faye
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:55:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24868729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: She's been here nearly a month and she's sometimes surprised she still has the energy to look up from her gruel.
Kudos: 1
Collections: Anonymous





	and you wonder why i can't relate anymore

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanon from a minor detail in _The Fatal Flame_

One day Selina looks up from the gruel they serve at breakfast and there's a boy at the other end of the table. He's new, she thinks. She'd have noticed him before, she thinks. He has golden hair and green eyes and he's tall, and he must be new, because he has enough spirit left in him to notice her looking, and to smile at her. 

She's been here nearly a month and she's sometimes surprised she still has the energy to look up from her gruel. 

They don't really use names in the House of Refuge: everyone is boy or else they are girl. Yet she hears about him all the same: the boy who gets beaten on his first day there, and laughs about it. The boy who gets beaten again on his second day, and laughs even harder. The boy who gets beaten on his third day, and asks if they can put their back into it more. 

On the fourth day, Selina manages to speak with him. "You should be careful," she says, in the cold and dank and endless hallways. "They kill children here."

He looks at her, then. There's something about his eyes and the twist of his mouth when he says, "That's not the worst of what they do to children here, is it."

She doesn't know why she tells him. Perhaps it's because he's still not broken. Perhaps it's because, with his tawny mane and green eyes and sharp white teeth, he looks more like a feral cat than a boy, and Selina remembers the old ginger tom cat that frequented their alley with more fondness than any man she will ever know. 

"Oh," he says, and looks at her, not laughing for once. "I'm trying to find a way to escape. Once I do, I'll take you with me."

"I've found a way to escape," she says, and shows him the glass. She's been saving the piece of glass. Some nights she thinks she could kill herself with it, but her nerve always fails her. Some nights she thinks she could kill the men with it, but her mind always asks: and what then? Do you suppose they will release you, after they find a guard dead in your bed? After they find a priest dead in your bed? "Only I can't. Every time I try, I--"

He understands. He folds her fingers over it. She bleeds but for once it's comforting. He promises that she won't have to kill herself. He doesn't say he'll do it for her, but it's as good as. He looks like a cat. He looks like an angel. He will look out for her immortal soul.

"Take me with you," she says, on the sixth day, sobbing and hating herself for it. "Take me with you, or kill me with this."

"I will," he says, "I will."

But he's not an orphan, and, on the seventh day, his parents show up. And she sees him leave through the front doors, and she breaks the glass into fragments, and swallows them, and yet somehow, somehow she lives.


End file.
